Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1887-06-16
Disabilities for Drunkenness.

Rev. DR.. n. Summerbell, who has for
forty years been a leading minister in
the Christian or Newlight denomination,
and is in all senses sound and practir
cal man, has delivered lecture on tenn
persnce In which he advances some ideas
that long since commended themselves
to thoughtful minds. 1t may be well to
say that be is no prohibitionist, but
looks to the Republican party for any
and all practical legislation upon the
liquor question.
He proposed to turn the course of leg
islation against the drunkard himself.
Promising that the use of strong drink
induces either permanent or temporary
idiocy or insanity, he thinks the habit
ual and occasional drunkard should
be dealt with in the same way as the
chronic or temporarily idiot or insane;
that is that the laws should provide dis
abilities for them as for other insane
individuals. All insane persons have
lucid moments; some are more fre>
uuently lucid than otherwise; but none
are to he trusted. Hence the man who
drinks to drunkenness should not be al
lowed to transfer property without the
consent of guardian or of the courts;
should not be permitted to marry; if a
physicion should not be permitted to
collect fees for professional services; if
employed by corporation that fact
should subject the corporation to heavy
penalties; and so on.
DR.. Summerbells proposals will doubt
less be considered radical by those who
, look lightly on the crime of drunk
enness, ard will meet with no favor
| from those whose whole attention is di
rected toward liquor selling; but 1t
would be difficult to show wherein they
are fallacious. impractical or unsound.
That they would If made laws arm men
with a constant and powerful motive to
resist the vice of drunkenness, that they
would to large extent be self-operating
and self-enforcing, that they wonld in
duce in the minds of the young hor-
TOR Of inebriation that no prohibition
diatribes ever do, and that they would
Danish fashionable. social and jocular
Iintoxication, seems clearly evident; and
as nearly all drunkenness begins in the
fashionable, Jocular or social way, there
is hardly doubt that they would to a
great extent Danish the evil from com
munity.
| A man is insane when he is drunk, but
he is sane enough when he begins to
make himself drunk; and such laws
would operate with potent force to pre-
vent the beginnings of inebriety. A
Judge upon the bench who knows that
the first fit of intoxication will displace
him from bis office a lawyer who knows
that one debauch will work instant dis
barmept; physician who knows that a
lapse from soberness would prevent him
from collecting fees; a young man who
knows that drunknness will efectually
bar him from obtaining marriage liz
cense; citizen of any class who knows
that he will lose control of his property
if he permits himself to get drunk-ei
ther of these will hesitate long time
before he applies the intoxicating cup to
his lips, and in such case to hesitate
will be, unlike the case of woman, to
be saved rather than lost. Let the crime
of inebriation forfeit honors, offices,
rights and privileges, and it will be CON-
mitted as rarely as any other crime that
involves similar consequences.
That society has right to protect it,
self against That which is both vice
and crime by inficting penalties ami
disabilities upon the criminal, is too
plain to need argument.-O. S. Journal.